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Basic Questions and Answers

A: The AyrMesh system is a series of products that enable anyone to quickly and easily set up a wireless network across a farm, ranch, or other rural property. The system uses standard meshing WiFi (802.11s and 802.11n) access points called "AyrMesh Hubs." The first Hub, called the Gateway, connects to your internet-connected router and is mounted outside up high in the clear. Additional Hubs, called Remotes, can be placed up to 2.5 miles away and require only power and to be mounted up high and in the clear. You can create up to three "rings" of Hubs to create a "cloud" of WiFi up to 15 miles across. The Hubs are complemented by the AyrMesh Bridge, which is simply a 5-mile-long wireless Ethernet cable. See the "How it works" section of Ayrstone.com for specifics.

Q: How does AyrMesh work?

A: We use high-power, outdoor microwave radios based on Atheros (Qualcomm) chipsets. To those we add our own custom firmware, based on OpenWRT, and our own cloud-based management portal, AyrMesh.com. This makes a product that is simple (you only need to fill in your SSID and the encryption passkey in AyrMesh.com), self-configuring, and extremely easy to manage. The AyrMesh system is really just a well-engineered implementation of the appropriate standards with excellent "back-end" tools to help manage the products.

Q: Why is AyrMesh better than (fill in the blank)?

A: AyrMesh is designed to be the best possible solution for farmers, ranchers, and other small rural residents and businesses who need a simple, robust wireless network for a relatively small number (tens to low hundreds) of devices spread out over a very large area. To do this, we have "tuned" our products for range over total bandwidth. This is the opposite of most other WiFi systems that are either designed for expert networking technicians (with many, many features and extremely complex configuration so they can be configured in myriad ways) or for the provision of WiFi to large numbers of people in a small area (favoring bandwidth over range). The important thing is that AyrMesh is a solution for a particular case; if you are setting up a metropolitan network in town or public WiFi for an RV park, hotel, or campground, there are better products out there.

Q: What is the default SSID and passkey for the AyrMesh system?

The default SSID is AyrMesh, and the default passkey is Ayrmesh1. CHANGE THESE IN YOUR AYRMESH.COM ACCOUNT, because ANYONE can see this!!!